Andrew Garfield Is Selling a Talking-Tree Movie and a Medieval Bloodbath at the Same Time

Andrew Garfield showed up on a recent episode of SmartLess, the podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, to talk about two movies that could not be further apart in tone.

The first is The Magic Faraway Tree, a family film based on the Enid Blyton book, written by Simon Farnaby, who also wrote the Paddington movies. The second is The Uprising, a Paul Greengrass project centered on the peasants' revolt in the 1300s. Garfield told the hosts he's promoting both at once, and even he seemed to register the whiplash, noting the second film has "a slightly different, um, tone."

Bateman's reaction was blunt disbelief, and Hayes cracked that he'd read Blyton as a kid and somehow missed the part about peasant uprisings — there wasn't one, since the two projects share nothing but Garfield's schedule.

Once the hosts got past the joke, they pressed him on what shooting a medieval war film actually looks like day to day. Garfield said production filmed in Munich, where enough medieval architecture survives to double for several different eras. Most of the physical work, though, happened in a single muddy field standing in for multiple peasant encampments. His verdict on the experience: grim, but the good kind of grim.

He also gave Greengrass, the director behind Captain Phillips, the Bourne films and News of the World, credit for making that kind of suffering feel worthwhile, describing him as the sort of director who makes actors want to push through the misery because they trust where he's taking them.

No release dates were discussed on the show, but the pairing itself is the story here: a cozy children's book adaptation and a bleak Greengrass war drama, both landing in Garfield's press rotation at the same time.

Heard on SmartLess — "Andrew Garfield" (2026-09-07).